For the team of this project, there is a coup d’état underway in Brazil. Officially the process began on December 2, 2015, when the then president of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha accepted a denouncement of a crime of responsibility that culminated in the removal from office of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s then president, democratically elected by 54 million votes. Today, Cunha is in jail, serving 15 years and four months in prison for crimes of passive corruption, money laundering and the illegal sending of funds abroad. An excellent material for understanding this period is the poster Golpe Branco, created by artist Daniel Lima.

The dismantling of the fragile Brazilian democracy is still underway, even after Dilma’s impeachment. In first place in the surveys for the 2018 presidential elections, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in prison in Curitiba under a sentence contested by various jurists and international organizations like the UN.

It is in this problematic context that the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo is taking place. Even though curator Gabriel Perez-Barreiro has stated that the exhibition does not necessarily need to enter the electoral debate, always underscoring that the invited artists have total artistic freedom, various protests by artists and the public occured from September through December 2018. The project Another 33rd Bienal de São Paulo catalogued these movements on this page. The material will also become part of the alternative archive under construction, in an attempt of avoiding that future readings of the exhibit detach it from its political context.

Detail from an intervention (already removed) made during
the assembly of artist's Antonio Ballester Moreno installation. 
© Author did not want to identify. 09/05/2018 

Manifestation in favor of Lula's freedom at the opening of the Biennial. Coletivo Aparelhamento. 
© Ding Musa. 09/07/2018

Manifestation in favor of Lula's freedom at the opening of the Biennial. Coletivo Aparelhamento. 
© Ding Musa. 09/07/2018

Manifestation in favor of Lula's freedom at the opening of the Biennial. Coletivo Aparelhamento. 
© Ding Musa. 09/07/2018

Manifestation in favor of Lula's freedom at the opening of the Biennial. Coletivo Aparelhamento. 
© Ding Musa. 09/07/2018

Manifestation in favor of Lula's freedom at the opening of the Biennial.
© Bruno Moreschi. 09/07/2018

Video by Jornalistas Livres. 
© Mário Mieli. 09/07/2018

Jararaca Cultural Meeting: performance.
© Author did not want to identify. 10/13/2018

 
Jararaca Cultural Meeting: open discussion on the cultural proposals of the candidate Fernando Haddad for the Presidency.
© Author did not want to identify. 10/13/2018